


Trapped

by Halfblood_Fiend



Series: Tumblr Prompts Collection [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 07:12:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9590519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halfblood_Fiend/pseuds/Halfblood_Fiend
Summary: Keram has a panic attack





	

Her throat tightens until she can no longer breathe. Her heart thuds against her ribs, fast and painful. Her hands start shaking. She must control it. She’s known this before: the feeling of being locked away. In an effort to stop it, they curl into fists at her side, but the tremors only seem to travel through her flesh. Up her arms. Through her bones. Through her veins. If the shakes reach her already racing heart… Suddenly she feels she will explode. Heart beats faster and she cannot catch her breath.

Green eyes search for an escape. Find none.

Oxman.

Mage.

Demon.                

_Inquisitor._

_Herald of Andraste_.

Keram turns from the War Table abruptly. She charges through the door, her eyes darting wildly. Cullen calls out to her, but she ignores his words. She needs out. An escape. Her feet tumble forward in frantic paces. They pick up stride and carry her forward into a lurching, heavy, thudding run.

Warm air grew stifling. The walls became oppressive. Closing in. Everything was closing in on her, catching her, restricting her. A lifetime of running, only to be caged by the unlikeliest captors.

The fortress doors before her burst open. Open finally and she stumbles into the empty space. Fresh air whips over her skin, stings her face with its crispness and suddenly her lungs are unbound. Gasping, they are full.

She gulps. Swallows greedily. Feverish and intense, the air washes through her body, cleanses the tendrils of panic.

Keram closes her eyes and tilts her face back. She drinks the chill and the _fear_ and welcomes that old enemy into her body. She locks it away again, shoves it deep into the recesses of her mind as far from her waking thoughts as possible. This is the only way. Sorting herself was a task for another day, another lifetime. She cannot afford to take any time for herself.

She cannot afford to be so weak.

Her eyes open to the stars cast above her like glittering diamonds in a thick blanket of indigo blackness. Extensive and unyielding, vast and unending. Keram’s breathing slows. Her blood quiets. She is safe; lost in infinite anonymity. Compared to the sky, what is she? Nothing. Even a Herald is insignificant to the ages.

She breathes easy.

She is nothing to the sky, and she is nothing to time, and she is nothing to the Inquisition. She will one day be nothing but the dust that settles over the ground, and that settles her spirit.

Keram sits on the stone steps beneath the stars and waits.

She waits for the inevitable to claim her.


End file.
